Hypocritical? Maybe.

Our first week back came with a new unit, “The Body”. We read stories such as “Our Barbies, Ourselves” and works from Susan Sontag. All of these pieces were extremely feminist and some like “I Want a Wife” trashed males a little bit too much.
Back in the race unit, our class was all over the fact that if a white person says something towards another race that isn’t necessarily positive, then the white person gets called a racist and people look down on them. On the other hand, if someone says something offensive to someone of the Caucasian race, it pretty much just gets ignored and nothing else is thought about it. So sitting in class this week and listening to what everyone had to say about the readings, I decided that the concept of being hypocritical when it comes to race and racism also pertains to gender. I would like to say now that I have nothing against hardcore feminists and feminism, but I find it a little hypocritical. Women trashing men isn’t right; men trashing women isn’t right. I find that we are equal. Yes, we share different interests and we handle things differently, but one sex isn’t superior to the other. When a girl expresses all of the non-redeeming quialities a guy, it is making them look as if they think that they are better. Feminism is about women having equal rights to men. I’m a woman. I have equal rights. I’m fine. I don’t agree with putting the opposite sex down because we’re ‘better’. Yes, jokingly, I’m sure I’ve done it before. But it is like a never-ending battle of the sexes. Which is better? None. Guys are better than girls at certain things. Girls are better than guys at certain things (my psychology book says so). There are exceptions of course, but they balance each other out.
Anyway, when a female is putting down males, people don’t really say much. You’d get the occasional “uh, no you’re wrong.” But over all, people don’t make a huge deal about it. I feel, though, that if a guy were to write stories about how horrible women are, he would be marked as sexist and just a generally rude person. Now that isn’t fair. It’s just like the whole race concept. I’m not advocating that guys should trash women and have people be totally accepting of it, I just think that there should be some equality, because it is a little hypocritical. Again, this is just from my experience and I may just not be super observant of the other side.
If I recall correctly Susan Sontag wrote about how a woman’s beauty could either be helpful or hurtful. At the beginning of the essay, I got a little bored with it; but as I continued reading, I agreed when she said that girls look at themselves in the mirror and tear apart every tiny imperfection that they have while guys don’t. As a whole, I agree. I was working out at L.A. Fitness when I read the “Great Divide” and I started to look around me. Almost everyone at the gym was a middle-aged woman (except for the young, attractive body-builder-boy). They weren’t super skinny but none of them were fat. However all of them were just working themselves over on treadmills, elliptical trainers, and cycles. So was I. At that moment I realized that there is way more pressure on girls to look good than there is on guys. I’m not saying that guys can roll around being obese and have people still attracted to them. Buy guys don’t have to wear make-up. They don’t have to dye their hair. They don’t have to watch what they eat. (This is all general, of course). So why do we do it? I don’t have the answer.